As a conventional moving object automatic tracking apparatus, the apparatus described in, for example, Patent Reference 1 has been known. FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing a configuration example of the conventional moving object automatic tracking apparatus. A moving object automatic tracking apparatus 4 of FIG. 4 is configured to comprise a movement detector 41 which is connected to an image input portion 5 which is an imager and detects a moving object from an image obtained from the image input portion 5, a tracker 42 for tracking the moving object imaged by the image input portion 5 based on information about the moving object obtained by this movement detector 41, and a patrol monitor 43 for driving an imaging region of the image input portion 5 to the next monitoring area.
The moving object automatic tracking apparatus 4 of this conventional example implements an automatic tracker for automatically tracking a moving object so as not to fade out the moving object from an imaging screen by driving the image input portion 5 by the patrol monitor 43 based on a detection result obtained by the tracker 42 and the movement detector 41. At this time, plural preset positions which are an area for detecting the moving object are previously registered as initial registration and control is performed so as to turn the imager of the image input portion 5 in each of the registered preset positions and the preset positions are monitored in a patrol manner and thereby, wide monitoring can be performed.
Patent Reference 1: JP-A-2000-322582